the way home
by waterlit
Summary: Reasons why they keep fighting, why they keep calling the Order "home" - Chap 2: Cross, Krory, Miranda and Bookman - Chap 1: Kanda, Lavi, Allen and Lenalee.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** the way home

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own DGM.

 **Pairing:** None.

 **Summary:** Reasons why they keep fighting, why they keep calling the Order "home".

 **AN:** Thanks for reading, hope you'll enjoy it.

* * *

In the deep, cold wastes of northern Iceland, Allen waits in a leaking hut and huddles closer to the makeshift fire. At the side, the Finders toss and turn and pull their blankets closer around themselves.

The silence is heavy here at the end of the world; no one walks past the dirt road outside, not even a beggar. The fog is thick and grey and otherworldly, and it brings with it a bitter cold that tramples the soul into the icy dust.

He cannot allow himself to fall asleep. No one knows when the Akuma might appear, gunmetal grey bodies shifting out of the heavy darkness, guns out and bullets at the ready. And so he has to remain alert, because the Finders need their sleep.

 _This mission will be over soon_ , Allen thinks, warming his fingers. They feel like icicles and he wonders how long he can go without sleep.

He can't wait to return to the Headquarters. The old building rises unbidden in his mind's eye; there are tall turrets that thrust themselves into the forlorn sky, old spires and gothic eaves housing bats and pigeons and even the odd squirrel which creep about at the darkest hours.

Allen thinks of the bustling headquarters. When he gets back, there are plenty of things he wants to do: spar with Kanda, talk to Lavi amid the dusty shelves in the underground library, deliver piping hot coffee with Lenalee, banter with Reever and Johnny, try new dishes created by Jerry, walk in the tranquil gardens when the sun is barely ghosting the horizon, teach Krory to play cards, help Miranda – and then he thinks of the things he will have to do –

 _hide from new trouble-making Komurins, pay Cross's bills, being unable to save more Akuma while he waits for his next mission within the Order's grounds_ –

and yet he is glad to have a home to return to.

:::

Lenalee turns and waves to the toddler who peeks out from behind her mother's voluminous grey skirt.

"Thank you, exorcist," the village chief says, pressing Lenalee's hands.

"It was nothing," Lenalee says, beaming.

She boards the waiting train and follows the Finder to their carriage. It will be a long ride back through the moors, through yawning caves and under staid tunnels, and the hours will stretch on through the night like an endless kaleidoscope of horrors.

Lenalee wraps a thick scarf around herself; the Finder has already shut her eyes, exhausted from days of keeping watch. Her colleagues have already moved on to their next assignment, and it is she who gets a brief respite from the war; it is she who gets to return carrying a report to the Order, their home.

 _Home_ , Lenalee thinks, and leans her head against the window as she waits for the train to start moving. A solitary gas lamp burns outside along the shadowy, silent platform, a twinkle in the darkness and a glittering source of comfort for all who must travel in the darkest hours of the day.

Lenalee feels comforted by the lamp, for the nightmares come thick these days.

But she is going home.

Home, where her brother waits, drinking endless cups of coffee and reading reports through the night; home, where her friends are, waiting for their next mission. Home, where her heart is, where the darkness is stayed, where unpleasant dreams lose their malignance in the cadence of life and love.

She is going home.

When the train stops, she will take the underground ferry through the deep caves, across the jewel-like water, and step across the tiny dock into her brother's warm embrace, her brother who left his peaceful life in their homeland to accompany her, who left the land and life and woman he loved to be by her side.

Then she will look up at Komui, at Reever and Johnny and others standing behind him, and say _I'm home, Brother_.

And they will all rejoice in that infinite, miraculous moment.

:::

Kanda points at the rose emblem on his chest as he glares at the portly train attendant.

Perhaps the attendant recognises the emblem – or perhaps he is merely frightened of the sharp sword in Kanda's hands – for he hastily undoes the lock and ushers Kanda into the reserved cabin and leaves almost immediately.

Kanda sits and looks out at the moss-covered bricks of the station. There are dreary-faced people gathered along the platform, hands bundled under their woollen jackets. The wind blows cold here, here in the north of Scotland where the faeries sometimes still dance on moonlit nights.

Kanda hates Scotland. It's cold and he doesn't understand the language which flows like silk.

He also hates England, the land he is about to return to. London is grey and cold; it is also bloated with misery, poverty and smoke, and the living drop like flies every day at every street corner. There is no shortage of new bodies for the Earl to pick and choose from.

Kanda despises the Order. He thinks about leaving – he could leave and no one would know, he could leave Mugen behind, escape into the villages and the woods and eke out an existence somewhere, he could kill himself with a stab to the abdomen, he could hide in a rural village away from the bustle of the city.

But he doesn't.

Instead, he turns off the cabin lamp. In the shrouded darkness he can almost see the diaphanous silhouette of a slim, gentle woman; she reaches behind for his hands. She waits at the door, hands outstretched and never turning back. Kanda can only see the nape of her neck and the elegant bun of dark hair.

He reaches out too – but it is too late; she vanishes as the village bells ring in the midnight hour. His hand passes through nothing but the cool air, touches nothing but the door handle, strangely warm.

The dream dispersed, Kanda tucks his ticket away and waits for the train to start. He will not forsake the Order. He will fight –and fight – and fight, as he must, until he can see _her_ again, as he surely will.

:::

Lavi leans across the parapet of a bridge and rests his chin on his hand. The dark red bricks are stained a sooty grey. His scarf flutters around his neck. The wind is strong tonight, here where the blood-red, sharp-edged scythe trembles on its edge.

"Something wrong?" Bookman says, very nearly a ghoul in the tumbling fog.

The human guillotine is about to bite.

"Everything's wrong," Lavi says.

The air smells wrong too, here where the grinning necromancer directs his servant to unsheathe the sword of death.

A trumpet blows somewhere below. They peer through the fog. There are soldiers below, standing in neat columns, with shiny boots and hardy helmets. The trumpet sounds again, and the men start marching on towards the kiss of death and the un-peaceful rest of the living dead.

"Are you frightened?" Bookman asks as the contingent, brave and loud in its size, marches through the unnatural fog.

"No," Lavi says. But his heart goes thumpthump like a frantic drum, and despair ices his veins.

"We can leave the Order," Bookman says.

"No, Grandpa," Lavi says. "How can we leave?"

"We'll have to leave anyhow, if your Innocence evolves," Bookman says.

Lavi nods in a non-committal manner. The last of the soldiers march out of sight, swallowed up by the dank night and the stretching fog, and Lavi sighs.

The Order is teetering, and Lavi knows he cannot leave yet, not now, not soon, not when the world is about to be extinguished. He thinks of his comrades – his friends – and all they have been through, and he prays under the burning sickle moon that salvation will come.

Until then, they will all keep fighting – together (the code of the Bookmen be damned).


	2. Chapter 2

A nightmare creeps across the room and takes Cross by the throat.

His dreamscape changes; no longer is he facing a horde of Akumas, all leering at him with wicked, satisfied smiles. Instead a woman stumbles across his path, shudders to a stop and falls flat on the ground. Her silk sleeves flutter in the wind.

In that instant he knows. Anita. She is back to haunt him.

He rushes forward, pulling her upwards onto his bent knee.

"Anita!"

She stirs. Only – there are black spots over her face – her skin is darkening.

"Marian –" she says, very nearly dead.

He touches her pale, trembling lips. They too are turning a hideous ashy shade, those lips he used to kiss months ago, those lips he sought comfort in.

"Take care of yourself, Marian," she says. Her eyelids slip downwards, drawing a curtain over her beautiful eyes. The light of his world has begun to darken. "I am glad we meet again at my end."

"Anita –" he says, but she is gone now, she is a handful of dust, a crumpled silk dress, a bright sash trailing across the mud.

Cross wakes, perspiration thick on his forehead, on his cheeks, on his neck. He sits up, cradles his head in his hands, thinks of the forgotten past and the frightening future. He thinks of a world without a woman who truly understands his heart, his mind, his purpose.

He has a strong urge to leave the Headquarters now, to slaughter any number of Akuma, to avenge the woman he has lost to mindless savages built out of the skeleton of human misery. Thoughts such as this have plagued him ever since the young exorcists brought news of Anita's death aboard the ship she loved so much. No one else can fill that gaping ache in his heart now, no wanton or mistress could possibly take Anita's place.

 _You should have lived_ , he thought. _We were to sail together across all the waters of the world_.

But Cross knows he cannot leave. To leave now would be to incur Central's displeasure; to leave now would be to abandon his comrades to their certain deaths; to leave now would be to earn the wrath of the god in whose name he serves. To leave now would render Anita's death purposeless.

And so he stays, alone in the darkened room, for once sober and without a woman in his bed, thinking of the past and the future, and of the present. It is here, in the Headquarters, after all, that he can find ways to avenge Anita. It is here that he has to stay, for his idiot apprentice needs him as an anchor in the storm that is approaching.

Cross stays not because he wants to, but because he is duty-bound to stay.

 _For Anita_ , he thinks. _For Allen. For the Fourteenth. For Mana. For all those who have died and all those who must die._

:::

Krory passes by his old holdings one wintry day.

He reigns in his horse, shields his eyes against the wind and stares into the distance where the sun's fire-bright rays glint off the snowy mountain. Somewhere along the mountain a thin spire stretches into the sky, a most lonely sight. He cannot see the villages where he was lord, but they are there.

"Do you want to go back?" the Finder asks.

Krory says nothing, hears nothing.

"Sir?"

Krory startles like the beetle beneath the December snow. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Do you want to stop by your castle?"

Stop by his castle? Stop by the home of his youth, that dark, lonely place where the wind rattled the doors at night? Stop by that dreary, deserted mansion where no servants dared to work, where his grandfather had died ranting against the demented world? Stop by that cold, ancient seat of his forefathers, where dozens of his cousins and uncles and ancestors had lived in misery, many succumbing to the strangles of vices, many dying in grotesque circumstances perhaps orchestrated by the creeping hand of evil? For there was evil there, long buried in that land, and the evil had taken root in the heart of the ancient stronghold of the Krorys.

Perhaps that was why Eliade had been content, if only for a while, to live with him. Perhaps evil had called to evil.

Krory thought of Eliade, who had brought sunshine to his dark rooms, whose hair had gleamed like ripened corn in the fields of his fiefdom, who had sat with him through the darkest hours of the night as the shadows slid around their feet, who had taken care of him the best she could. She had loved him in her own fashion.

 _Eliade_ , he thought, _are you in heaven now? I could go back, and stay with your memory. I could… I have to fight in her memory, he thought. I cannot let her die in vain._

And so Krory shakes his head. "No, we will go on."

He raises his hand in farewell to the old castle; his signet ring glitters in the morning sun. _Farewell, my love_ , he thinks, and doesn't look back – he rides on, for he has a task to fulfil, and the Headquarters to return to.

:::

Miranda fumbles with her buttons; she is late for a meeting.

 _Will the Chief be angry?_ she wonders. I'm always doing this. _Unlucky Miranda, useless Miranda._

Her finger slips. The button refuses to slide into the buttonhole. _Unlucky Miranda, useless Miranda._

 _Unlucky Miranda, useless Miranda. Poor Miranda, ugly Miranda._

The children used to call her that. She remembered them, standing in a row, brave in their numbers as they stuck their tongues out and pulled faces at her, chanting the horrible chant they had made up for her.

She had been so poor them, so tired, so woebegone. There had seemed no way out, only an endless stream of days and months and years of helplessness and disdain, only desperation and contempt, only a life of turmoil and poverty.

And then the clock had come into her life. The days repeated themselves, and only she noticed. She had thought she was going crazy. It was then that Allen and Lenalee appeared, walking together in their black coats, observing everyone.

Rhode attacked them. She had been so useless then – so helpless as she saw Allen and Lenalee suffer, bleed, and yet return to the fight.

"I'm different now," she said aloud. She smiled at Time Record.

 _It's all different now._ Now she had power she could harness; now she could play a small part in their defence.

The button finally slid into place. Miranda grabbed her cloak and left her room, not bothering to lock it behind her. She was no longer worrying about whether Komui might scold her for being late.

Instead, she smiled as she walked, glad in the knowledge that she had a home now, that she had people she cared for, that she had the power to fight for them in turn, as they had once done for her.

:::

Bookman watches as the shadows climb like spiders across the floor, up the walls, dancing across the ceiling.

It is midnight, and he is old and tired. Lavi is already in bed, and it is time for him to sleep too. But he doesn't stir from his chair; instead, he sits still and silent, fingers locked. He thinks of the Akuma they have slain over the past week, of the dead and the dying, of the carrion birds circling the battlefields.

He thinks of the widows and the orphans, of the black gowns and sad faces in the street, of the houses that now stand empty as a forsaken nest.

He is old, and yet he has never witnessed so much carnage. The Earl is indeed ramping up his plans. This is an era to watch, and he is lucky to be here at the centre of things.

 _Will you leave? Will you flee?_ another Bookman had asked as they passed each other on the street. Lavi had not noticed the other man. _You could ask for a simpler assignment elsewhere. Let someone younger take your place._

 _No_ , Bookman had said. _I will stay to record all that there is to record._

 _Peace be with you_ , the other had said, with a gentle press of his palm, and then he was gone.

Bookman sighs. It is a weary sigh, a sigh that comes from old age and disillusionment.

Why does he stay? He could flee, could preserve his life. _It is my duty to stay and record the matters,_ he tells himself. _I stay because it is my duty_.

But there are times when he wonders if that is the only reason he stays, the only reason he lives at death's door every single day.

* * *

 **AN:** Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this; constructive criticism is always welcome. Bookman seems rather unattached to the Order in canon but I like to think that he does hold friendly feelings for his comrades (although it is quite possible that this is merely a misguided thought).

In other news, I've just finished Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Her writing style is such a pleasure to read, don't you think?

Anyway, have a good new year weekend!


End file.
